"Moby Dick is the story of Captain Ahab's quest to avenge the whale that ‘reaped’ his leg. The quest is an obsession and the novel is a diabolical study of how a man becomes a fanatic.
But it is also a hymn to democracy. Bent as the crew is on Ahab's appalling crusade, it is equally the image of a co-operative community at work: all hands dependent on all hands, each individual responsible for the security of each.
Among the crew is Ishmael, the novel's narrator, ordinary sailor, and extraordinary reader. Digressive, allusive, vulgar, transcendent, the story Ishmael tells is above all an education: in the practice of whaling, in the art of writing. Expanding to equal his ‘mighty theme’ – not only the whale but all things sublime – Melville breathes in the world's great literature. Moby Dick is the greatest novel ever written by an American." [Amazon.co.uk, [link] 18th March 2014]
Even though the narrator is Ishmael, Moby Dick (the sperm whale) is perhaps the most important character in the book in my opinion because of the fact that the whole story is based around Captain Ahab's fascination with him and other ships who had fallen to it's destruction even though the whale didn't actually appear in much of the story. At the end of the story Moby Dick manages to sink the whole ship, with Captain Ahab attached to it by a harpoon-rope around his neck, and only Ishmael survives.
From this information I have created a mind map to help spark some possible ideas for my typographic piece.
And here are some existing pieces featuring Moby Dick:
Image sources: houseofismay; Stefanoreves; unknown; Tony Millionaire; Vintage Moby Dick cover ; Ashley Honstein; 1947 paperback of Moby Dick
With my background information done I can now move onto looking at some inspiration for this which I had made notes of within my mind map. I have a keen interest in decorative type and would like to look at the original source of this style, which comes from the nineteenth to early twentieth century.
No comments:
Post a Comment